Tech-wise, the Election is worlds apart from just two years ago. In 2006, I was consulting with a handful of organizations all trying to set up text message based Election monitoring systems. Organized by a centralized nonprofit organization, these programs aimed to put reporting tools into the hands of voters and volunteer poll watchers alike. None of these efforts got off the ground.
Now, two years later, none of this infrastructure needs to be built and it doesn't need anything more than a guiding hand to make it happen. The tools are more mature and well known: Twitter, YouTube, etc. Now, it's just a question of marketing... letting people know that they can use these tools in a particular way that strengthens the integrity of the voting system.
My sense is that none of these efforts will pull through in a major way for this election. The marketing effort doesn't have enough reach. But that they will set the stage for substantive efforts next time around.
Simon Owens reviews many of these efforts in this excellent writeup:
Citizens, Media Use Social Media to Monitor Election
Two of the most interesting projects he covers are:
PBS's Video Your Vote project and Nancy Scola's Twitter Vote Report (note that I read a lot of Scola's work in preparation for writing Mobilizing Generation 2.0 - and have a pithy quote in the virtual world's chapter from some of her work).
Note that one of the ideas Jacob had for The Extraordinaries is to enable citizens to record audio/video as one of the short-term volunteer tasks that we'll offer through the mobile phone app. Thanks to all of these great projects for going through the fires first!
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